Semiconductor technology has sustained significant improvements over the last few decades. The concurrent increase in complexity and shrinking scale of semiconductors has generated its own law, Moore's Law, relating the exponential growth in the number of transistors per integrated circuit. These gains necessitated a similar growth in many related industries such as the semiconductor packaging industry.
Semiconductors generate heat while operating. If the heat is not dissipated, it may damage a semiconductor or cause it to malfunction. As transistor density in semiconductor packages increases, heat dissipation becomes an issue.
Substrates and packages affect semiconductor performance in many ways. Integrated circuits are often packaged and typically reside in or on a substrate. Electrical, thermal and mechanical considerations are relevant to substrate and package design. For example, substrates and packages remove heat from a integrated circuit while also providing power and signaling.
Semiconductors may be packaged in a stacked configuration. Stacked configurations generally have heightened requirements for providing power and signaling to a semiconductor as well as for dissipating heat.